King’s dream: Close but elusive

Published: Friday, August 30, 2013 at 07:03 PM.

There was a replica of the transit bus that Rosa Parks used to make her historic stand by remaining seated.

Civil rights leaders from the 1960s such as former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young led songs. Bells rang from the National Cathedral.

Peaceful marchers were in abundance on a rainy Washington day.

And the nation’s first black president spoke, standing in the spot where the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave one of the most famous speeches in American history on Aug. 28, 1963.

On that historic day at the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall, King would deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. In April 1968, he would become a martyr for that just and righteous cause. America would ultimately come to celebrate him with an annual holiday.

But still, far too many fail to understand the power the March on Washington holds for black Americans. It was a time of words and deeds that would resonate for decades.

There was a replica of the transit bus that Rosa Parks used to make her historic stand by remaining seated.

Civil rights leaders from the 1960s such as former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young led songs. Bells rang from the National Cathedral.

Peaceful marchers were in abundance on a rainy Washington day.

And the nation’s first black president spoke, standing in the spot where the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave one of the most famous speeches in American history on Aug. 28, 1963.

On that historic day at the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall, King would deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. In April 1968, he would become a martyr for that just and righteous cause. America would ultimately come to celebrate him with an annual holiday.

But still, far too many fail to understand the power the March on Washington holds for black Americans. It was a time of words and deeds that would resonate for decades.

So much, of course, is lost to history as generations become further removed from the event and that turbulent era. For a great number, it’s hard to fathom there was a time when black citizens were forced to ride in the back of buses or were only served at a side window reserved for “coloreds” at local restaurants. Generations of black and white Americans have now walked together, broken bread together, attended schools together, worked together and joined churches together. Many share the same families. Even more are friends. All are equal today in the eyes of the law.

To younger generations, so much of what’s past seems like, well, ancient history.

But for those who were there during the 1963 March on Washington, memories of the past linger. They linger because they must; but times, indeed, have changed.

While King’s dream has never been closer, we are reminded daily of how elusive it can still be — this noble hope that we all be judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.

As President Obama took the spot where King spoke 50 years ago, he paid tribute to those who marched in 1963 and noted the America of that time is far different than America today. He’s the living proof. The history, he said, is significant and can’t be overlooked.

“To dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest — as some sometimes do — that little has changed, dishonors the courage, the sacrifice, of those who paid the price to march in those years,” Obama said.

And in a sentence that speaks to the past, present and future, Obama told the gathering that included two former presidents, “The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own.”